Saturday, January 16, 2010

Bieniakony, a gmina in Lida district, numbers 237 houses, 3,305 peasants of both sexes. Gmina administration in the town of Bieniakonie. The gmina encompasses 4 rural precincts: Gajcieniszki, Wronowo, Bolcieniki, and Sokoleńszczyzna, and numbers 49 villages.

(Słownik, v. I, p. 133)

See Beniakony. Town, Lida district, in the 2nd administrative precinct, property of Pań Rymsza, at a distance of 47 wiorsts from Wilno, 43 from Lida. Inhabitants, of both sexes, total 63. The wooden Catholic parish church of St. John the Baptist was founded in 1634 by Jan Czapliński. Catholic parish, Raduń deanery, has 4,370 faithful. Branch in Butrymańce.

The Bieniakonie rural precinct, Lida district, has a population of 2,840, that is, 1,436 male and 1,404 female. The land in the district is flat, with woods and marshes, a great deal of fallow [land]; rivers Solcza and Żyżma.

(Słownik, v. I, p. 218)

(See v. I, p. 133, Beniakony, and v. I, p. 218, Bieniakonie). A small town on the River Solcza, Lida district, 2nd police precinct, Bieniakonie gmina, 43 wiorsts from Lida, 47 wiorsts from Wilno, 63 inhabitants (in the year 1865). Belongs to the Gajcieniszki estate of Rymsza. Catholic parish church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, built of wood in the year 1634 by Jan Czapliński, rebuilt in 1810. Parish, Raduń deanery, 4,808 faithful; branch church in Butrymańce; gmina administration, water mill. Lies near the border of Oszmiana district.

(Słownik, v. XV, p. 144)

Butrymańce

2.) Village, Lida district, has a Catholic church, St. Michael’s, built of wood by Baron Schrotter, branch of Bieniakonie [parish].

Hi Steve! Finally catching up a bit ... it seems our families are connected to two distinct villages named Butrymonys, yours from Troki powiat and mine from Lida powiat. That must have been a bit confusing for those families, once they were in Worcester.

... my curiosity about my family's past was fed by the stories Stefania told me, and the stories I never had a chance to hear from Alek and Julius, and the stories I failed to seek from Anna.

Prokopowicz Surname Y-DNA Project

The Prokopowicz surname is common in the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—today's Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. The geographic focus of this DNA project is the area bounded more or less by Vilnius (Wilno), Lithuania, to the north; Hrodna (Grodno), Belarus, to the west; Navahrudek (Nowogrodek), Belarus, to the south; and Minsk, Belarus, to the east. The specific geographic focus is the Lida area of Belarus, from Scucin (Szczuczyn) in the west to Radun, north of Lida.

The goals of this project are to determine which if any of the various Prokopowicz families in this geographic area share a common male ancestor, and to identify relationships between branches of the Prokopowicz families who in recent generations may have become estranged due to immigration, war, deportation, etc.

At the Ellis Island bookstore

During my visit to Ellis Island in 2005, I was thrilled to discover that the bookstore carries the Polish community books I have coauthored for Arcadia Publishing. On display here is The Polish Community of New Britain.

Some Relevant Books

Applebaum, Anne. Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

About Me

I am descended from two apparently unrelated Prokopowicz families with Polish Roman Catholic roots in the Lida area of what is now western Belarus (at one time Wilno gubernia of Russian Poland). My grandparents immigrated to the United States before World War I and settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I grew up. I am a journalist and the lead coauthor of The Polish Community of Worcester (Arcadia, 2003) and Worcester County's Polish Community (Arcadia, 2007). Active in genealogy since 1996, I am a member of several genealogical societies and the founder/moderator of the PolishMass Yahoo! Group. I conduct presentations on Polish genealogy, documenting local and family heritage through vintage images, and the history of Polish settlement in Massachusetts. I have traveled to Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania to visit my ancestral villages and meet long-lost cousins. If I could time-travel, I would go back to Lida powiat to meet my great-grandparents and earlier ancestors.